We are living in the beginnings of a new Dark Age. Our institutions and ideas are failing. Our economies are being dragged under by debt. The cracks in civilization are beginning to appear. This is not playing to fears, but addressing facts. Now is the time not only to prepare ourselves personally, but also to begin the process of storing the knowledge of our world so that it will survive the coming collapse.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Returns

As the readers of this blog know, I've been away for a while, but now I'm back. Thank you for the inquiries and compliments that many of you've sent in my absence and I feel both bad for making you send them and glad that you did.

Over the years that I've studied how civilizations collapse (and personal survival long before that), I've run into a lot of people who have inexplicable faith in the future. They look at the past, see that there have been many problems which have come up, then looked at the solutions to those problems, then look at the future, assuming that the past is our guide. In truth, we are entering new territory -- the point in time where we have absolutely no model for a mismanaged and overextended civilization, outside of how Rome fell. People cannot contemplate the end of things, either of their own lives, or the "world" which has been built for them and which they in turn have built on.

When we have the "balls" to point out to them that "Hey, your false idols are going to topple sooner or later, probably sooner," they have mixed reactions, from looking at us like we're a little nuts, to downright hostility to question the worldview which they have put so much faith into. And, in truth, there are a few maladjusted "doom junkies" who, for deep psychological reasons, would love to see billions die off and humanity collapse back into the paleolithic for a long downhill slide. But, for the rest of us, we live in the same space that enthusiastic optimists do...we go to the same places, have the same kinds of friends, like the same kind of food. The only real difference is that we have taken a look at the future, with an unbiased eye, and know there's no way to escape the coming storm. We're not happy about the way things are turning out, how the optimism of the 1950s has turned into the denial of 2011.

This is not an easy thing to deal with. Sometimes, we just have to take a breath, go smell the roses for a while, waste time in a hobby or other form of distraction. We look at the abyss, but the abyss definitely looks back at us. All the time. For those of us who write publicly about these topics, who spent hours thinking about the collapse of modern civilization, poring over every last scrap of relevant information and item of bad news, it's even more painful to keep going and writing on the subject. The truth is, when people call us"doom and gloom" for speaking the truth, we all too well know what a price there is to pay for going down this road of inquiry in the first place. It gets hard to enjoy modern life, when you know it's getting late in the day and there's a cold, hard rain coming. Not just modern life, with the bells and whistles, but everything. Sometimes, we have to walk away for a little while, but we come back stronger than before, with more resolve, because we know that we can at least reach a few people who will take this to heart.

Not that I've ever cared much critics, and not that I would ever quit writing because someone got mad because I suggested that all they take for granted today will likely be gone in a few years -- to quote Austin Collins -- "It's easier to offend you than to hold my breath for days." Instead, if I ever quit again, it's because I need to take a break and rediscover why I'm here and why I do what I do. In the meantime, there's plenty of material to write about, including the battle over unions and what it really means in America, to the collapse of regimes in the middle east (bonus points to anyone who thinks that civil war in oil-producing regions is going to hose our economy once more), to personal preparedness.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for being real out there, not people lying to yourselves.

2 comments:

I am much relieved that you are back posting these excellent missives.

In terms of what could be coming in the future, I know what you mean - the effect of thinking about the coming "hard, cold rain" can take its toll - Charles Hugh Smith (another excellent blogger with a similar view to yours) called it the "burden of knowing".

But we need to keep thinking and planning and discussing - the goal you set for this blog is admirable - if the "cold, hard rain" comes, and this blog in some way makes a meaningful difference - then it will be so worth it. I may not believe in much anymore, but I do believe in Good, Evil and Karma. This is a Good effort, and may good karma flow to you for doing it.

Without being too dramatic, I'm reminded a little of the Blue Pill/Red Pill scenario from The Matrix. We can either put our trust, faith and future in the hands of other people, or look at it ourselves from a sobering perspective. Once we start looking at the world clearly, we can't easily go back to "the comfort zone," no matter how much we want to. The bright side is, we're also a lot less likely to be blindsided when bad things do happen.